Communications and Technology Blog - Tehrani.com - E-Commerce Archivestag:blog.tmcnet.com,2011-06-02:/blog/rich-tehrani//132015-06-25T17:22:00ZCommunications and Technology Blog - Latest news in IP communications, telecom, VoIP, call center & CRM spaceAmazon is Doomed, Apple to hit a Trillion Dollarstag:blog.tmcnet.com,2015:/blog/rich-tehrani//13.529922015-06-25T17:17:15Z2015-06-25T17:22:00ZThis is an eye-opening presentation from Steve Galloway of NYU Stern about the future of tech. Facebook and Apple are golden and Amazon will have issue thanks to increasing shipping costs.Macy's is the future of commerce - omnichannel.Its funny -...Rich Tehranihttp://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/rich-tehrani/Macy's is the future of commerce - omnichannel.

Its funny - hopefully not offensive to you. Well-done.

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Bluecore: How to Reduce Shopping Cart Abandonmenttag:blog.tmcnet.com,2015:/blog/rich-tehrani//13.529042015-05-13T14:43:22Z2015-05-13T16:25:58ZShopping cart abandonment is like an arch nemesis for many marketers. Yet, while cart abandonment can be detrimental to revenue, there are several other merchandizing triggers marketers are ignoring that cripple sales. To learn more I interviewed Fayez Mohamood, Co-founder...Rich Tehranihttp://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/rich-tehrani/marketers. Yet, while cart abandonment can be detrimental to revenue, there are several other merchandizing triggers marketers are ignoring that cripple sales. To learn more I interviewed Fayez Mohamood, Co-founder & CEO at Bluecore (bio follows interview) to discuss the four additional merchandising triggers, beyond cart abandonment, marketers are ignoring. Although we all know generating urgency is crucial to increasing sales, I like how Fayez shows how this can be done well electronically and moreover talks about the positive results of doing so. I hope you find the interview useful.

Shopping cart abandonment rates are still high, why do you think that is?

The power of cart abandonment emails is the clear buyer intent. When you couple this with new capabilities to entice buyers to convert that purchase through a free shipping offer or a warning that a product is low on inventory, you add that small incentive that brings them back into the purchase funnel.

Every retailer, big or small has some sort of triggered messaging as part of their email marketing mix, and most begin with a welcome series trigger (thanks for signing up!) and a cart abandonment (why did you not buy!?). These are triggered emails purely based on customer activity. They are effective because they are automated, timely and personal - everyone wins. While there is plenty of data showing how effective abandoned cart emails are, it's a mistake to think that these triggers encompass the world of all possible triggered messaging. The reality is that triggers based on customer activity, while effective, represent only a tiny portion of a retailer’s potential email marketing mix.

How and why should marketers automate communications based on product catalog changes?

Unlike Customer Triggers which act on data that is a few days old at most, merchandizing triggers requires the ability to process fine-grained customer and product catalog activity at scale that spans a timeframe of months or years.

Marketers have not traditionally implemented merchandising-based triggers because the technology that was necessary to ingest, transform and take action on this type of data has only become affordable in the last year or two. In addition, legacy email systems are horizontal systems that serve many different industries and not just eCommerce. General purpose platforms do not understand the semantics of eCommerce right out of the box. This is the primary reason why Bluecore only works with eCommerce/Brands/Retailers, all of our technology is built specifically to understand the semantics of eCommerce, so that we can launch these advanced triggers in days or weeks, not months.

Across our customers who have implemented merchandising triggers (New Product Arrivals, Price Drops, Low Inventory) these triggers end up representing up to 50% of all email channel revenue. And better yet, these emails are based on product and customer activity that makes everything down to the subject line, extremely relevant to the user. Bluecore partners average an open rate of 41% and an average click-through-rate of 8% - those numbers trounce the industry averages.

How does the term omnichannel figure into abandonment if at all?

Savvy retailers have realized that the value of their email marketing programs cannot solely be measured by conversions. Many customers first open an email on their mobile device while on the go, only to revisit an offer from a laptop later in the day. Or, in the cases of more premium retailers, customers use email marketing content like cart abandonment or new product arrival triggers and a digital shopping list, taking their mobile devices to brick-and-mortar locations to make purchases.

How is commoditization of products influencing cart abandonment?

For commodity products, it becomes much more important to be real-time with cart abandonment. Reaching the customer even 24 hours might be too late, as they might have made that purchase elsewhere.

What about shipping costs?

Free shipping is a great incentive retailers can offer customers to drive return engagement with their online storefronts.

What are your thoughts about services like ShopRunner – effectively Amazon Prime for a group of retailers?

Services like ShopRunner are great for consumers, especially if services like that can aggregate customer behavior across groups of retailers to better personalize marketing to their customers.

How can retailers turn the high abandonment rate trend around?

Two key components here are personalization and timing. First, deliver a message that not only takes into account the exact products that were browsed for, searched for or placed in a cart, but also includes related products based on past purchases or top sellers in that same category. Second, time is of the essence. If you have a compelling message, or better yet offer (FREE SHIPPING), trigger that email just hours after abandonment. Waiting days just provides customers more opportunity to either lose interest or purchase elsewhere.

Can you give us some real-world examples?

Diamond Candles averages a 40% unique open rate across all triggered emails. All six triggers currently deployed are personalized based on customer browse, search and purchase behaviors and optimized for time based on retailer preference to drive high open and conversion rates. Diamond Candles’ Abandoned Cart trigger shows a conversion rate of more than 22% and, when taking into account all six triggers across the program they average a 13% conversion rate. Typical conversion rates for non-personalized, high-volume promotional email sends is 2-5%.

Fayez Mohamood (LinkedIn, Twitter) is cofounder and CEO of Bluecore, enabling eCommerce marketers to create and distribute personalized triggered emails with the speed and precision not previously possible, dynamically reacting to customer behaviors and cataloging changes in seconds. With more than 70 partners representing more than 100 consumer brands. Bluecore is one of New York City’s fastest growing startups, recently closing a Series A round led by FirstMark Capital.

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Monoprice USB-C Cable Line Provides Real Valuetag:blog.tmcnet.com,2015:/blog/rich-tehrani//13.529022015-05-12T23:08:41Z2015-05-12T23:22:16ZRich Tehranihttp://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/rich-tehrani/
Recently I spent some time at Interop with executives from Monoprice, the company more well-known for inexpensive HDMI cables and audio equipment. It’s worth noting the media generally loves Monoprice… Their products are known to be of high-quality while being low cost. I have ordered from them – some audio cables actually and was happy as well.

In a conversation with Manual Hernandez and Eeric Krause, they told me their go-to-market strategy is different than most companies. They are a contract manufacturer and subsequently handle the export, import and distribution. They emphasized they have no middleman which means you don’t see the product marked up few times.

Moreover, the company wants the corporate world to know they have been serving this market for almost four years and they are disruptive when competing against companies like Belkin. They have 47 bulk cable SKUs in fact. At Interop 2015 they showed off their bootless line of patch cables of the CAT5e and 6 variety.

What I thought might be most interesting however to users of the latest laptops on the market is their line of USB-C cables from $10-$35. It’s worth noting the cables all have a lifetime warranty and the company isn’t shy in telling you they also carry routers, switches and patch panels.

Getting back to USB-C… Monoprice will charge you $12.99 for a 6-foot USB-C male to male connector while Apple will charge you $29. The price savings is similar across the board.

The pair also told me their new USB-C cables work with Chromebooks as well as Apple products as opposed to Apple USB-C cables which only work with Apple products. I couldn’t verify this claim independently and Apple did not immediately respond to a request on the matter. If they do, I will update this post - assuming of course I don't die of shock.

Bottom line: Monoprice wants to be a household brand – known for providing superior quality at low prices. Not unlike what Honda was once and perhaps is still known for.

The biggest challenge for the company of course might be Amazon – but the online retailer does also sell their products making them frenemies. In reality though, many of us have been burned by low-priced cables and other products when shopping online. I have thrown out all my low-cost Lightning cables I purchased on the online retailer. If Monoproce can continue to establish itself as a high-quality, low-cost provider it likely has a bright future.

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cVidya Helps CSPs Provide Mass Customization to Boost Profittag:blog.tmcnet.com,2015:/blog/rich-tehrani//13.527542015-03-03T11:40:15Z2015-03-03T12:05:25ZWe live in an age of mass customization. We've seen the trend for decades but its accelerating as customers can design their own clothes, perfume and more. Tatoos and body jewelry are yet other ways consumers choose to customize themselves....Rich Tehranihttp://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/rich-tehrani/

You see, at MWC 2015, cVidya showed carriers how their solutions allow them to tap into multiple sources in order to accelerate customer value. By using their substantial domain expertise in fraud detection and revenue assurance coupled with Hadoop-powered big data analysis and built-in use cases, the company allows carriers to tap into old and new data sources with statistical and analytical models in order to unlock hidden value in the subscriber base.

Specifically, the company can help a CSP accelerate data usage through the promotion of shared data plans. They can utilize location information to aid in fraud detection. They can go after silent roamers by offering them special plans for the duration of their stay in a new calling area. Prepaid customers can be targeted with short-term offers either for a number of days or a week or more. By using analytics to determine what the customer might accept and tapping into a credit database, the carrier can make an informed decision on what the customer is likely to agree to.

Moreover as mentioned above, a carrier can really target customers with specific offers rather than referring them to a web portal with lots of choices. If the offer is highly-relevant and presented in an easy to digest 140 characters, consumers are more likely to accept them.

Customers can also be presented with retention offers specific to their circumstances which include usage, financial situation and other factors. The carrier would likely also factor in credit worthiness before allowing a customer too much credit.

In short, the goal of the company's latest analytics offerings is to ensure carriers leverage the power of virtually limitless information with data contained in the network to maximize ARPU, reduce churn and add new customized offers to customers.]]>
cVidya Helps CSPs Provide Mass Customization to Boost Profittag:blog.tmcnet.com,2015:/blog/rich-tehrani//13.527552015-03-03T11:40:15Z2015-03-03T12:16:38ZWe live in an age of mass customization. We've seen the trend for decades but its accelerating as customers can design their own clothes, perfume and more. Tatoos and body jewelry are yet other ways consumers choose to customize themselves....Rich Tehranihttp://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/rich-tehrani/

You see, at MWC 2015, cVidya showed carriers how their solutions allow them to tap into multiple sources in order to accelerate customer value. By using their substantial domain expertise in fraud detection and revenue assurance coupled with Hadoop-powered big data analysis and built-in use cases, the company allows carriers to tap into old and new data sources with statistical and analytical models in order to unlock hidden value in the subscriber base.

Specifically, the company can help a CSP accelerate data usage through the promotion of shared data plans. They can utilize location information to aid in fraud detection. They can go after silent roamers by offering them special plans for the duration of their stay in a new calling area. Prepaid customers can be targeted with short-term offers either for a number of days or a week or more. By using analytics to determine what the customer might accept and tapping into a credit database, the carrier can make an informed decision on what the customer is likely to agree to.

Moreover as mentioned above, a carrier can really target customers with specific offers rather than referring them to a web portal with lots of choices. If the offer is highly-relevant and presented in an easy to digest 140 characters, consumers are more likely to accept them.

Customers can also be presented with retention offers specific to their circumstances which include usage, financial situation and other factors. The carrier would likely also factor in credit worthiness before allowing a customer too much credit.

In short, the goal of the company's latest analytics offerings is to ensure carriers leverage the power of virtually limitless information with data contained in the network to maximize ARPU, reduce churn and add new customized offers to customers.]]>
Restoration Hardware's E-commerce Fighting Formulatag:blog.tmcnet.com,2014:/blog/rich-tehrani//13.525792014-12-16T23:36:37Z2014-12-16T23:48:21ZA Tasteful Blend of Starbucks and Apple Retail Experiences designed to make customers fall in loveApple has the most valuable retail real estate in history, outdoing Tiffany. As a result, Microsoft has stores which mimic Apple. Samsung does as well....Rich Tehranihttp://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/rich-tehrani/A Tasteful Blend of Starbucks and Apple Retail Experiences designed to make customers fall in love

Apple has the most valuable retail real estate in history, outdoing Tiffany. As a result, Microsoft has stores which mimic Apple. Samsung does as well. More importantly, many retailers emulate the look of Apple stores. Who would have thought two decades ago that retailers had anything to learn from the computer industry?

This is part of the reason their head of retail was lured away some years back to turn J.C. Penney around. This failed spectacularly. The question is, can Apple’s magic be applied elsewhere?

Next up, Restoration Hardware or RH. Penney is a low-budget retailer where low prices and frequent sales dictate the company’s survival. The changes which were made included eliminating sale prices and improving the brand quality and price of the in-store merchandise. Shoppers didn't adapt to spending more and new, premium customers, not surprisingly, never materialized. RH on the other hand is a premium brand.

“The heart is ten-thousand times more powerful than the mind,” says company’s Chairman & CEO, Gary Friedman. He believes his brand will be the Apple of their market – they are looking to make an emotional connection with consumers, not just intellectual. He suggests in a video that the irrational desire for consumers to stand in line to get a phone when they an order it online is what they are looking to emulate.

The company’s new galleries in Los Angeles and Atlanta seem to be big hits. These new sites blur residential and retail, indoors and outdoors. Physical and digital.

He says guests say they want to live in these new store experiences.

These inspired spaces with garden courtyards and rooftop parks; with reflecting pools, trickling fountains and fireplaces are the company’s insurance against online competition he implies.

In my opinion, we are seeing Starbucks meets Apple.

This could be retail’s best hope to take on the web.

If it is, we can thank Apple for transforming retail once again and in a weird way, helping bricks and mortar compete more effectively with one of Cupertino’s big rivals – Amazon.

I’m on the phone with ThinkGeek because I purchased something which they shipped incorrectly. I tried email and didn’t get a response. They do say there is a 48-hour window which technically ends tomorrow but I’m not very patient.

Interestingly the hold time via phone is 88 minutes for the 11th person in the queue. The hold time for chat is shorter – I’m 44th in the queue and the hold time is around 24 minutes. That's under 30 seconds per person, as opposed to eight minutes by phone.

During the holidays I suggest companies answer email more quickly, otherwise impatient customers like me get frustrated and tie up the phone and chat queue simultaneously.

One other thought - their on-hold music is atrocious. Waterboarding has nothing on the ThinkGeek hold-music DJ.

Having said that I really do love the site but even though I am a fan of Star Wars and Star Trek - (does that make me ambi-geekstrous?) I think they overdo the amount of merchandise devoted to these and other TV shows/movies. I prefer more gadgets. Then again, the reason for this focus is likely because these items can't easily be found less expensively on Amazon.

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10 Reasons why CurrentC Will Lose the Mobile Payment Wartag:blog.tmcnet.com,2014:/blog/rich-tehrani//13.524822014-10-31T17:13:49Z2014-10-31T17:26:41ZBy now, most of us have heard that retailers such as CVS allowed NFC-based payments for a few days via Apple Pay and then blocked them in favor of QR-code based CurrentC by MCX. While retailers would prefer non-credit card-based...Rich Tehranihttp://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/rich-tehrani/
By now, most of us have heard that retailers such as CVS allowed NFC-based payments for a few days via Apple Pay and then blocked them in favor of QR-code based CurrentC by MCX. While retailers would prefer non-credit card-based solutions, such as MCX, these are the reasons CurrentC has already lost the war.

There is a campaign to give the CurrentC app a one-star review and that is the number of stars it currently “enjoys.” Its top three reviews in the Apple iTunes App Store are horrifying as you can see above.

CurrentC has already been hacked. Regardless of what was taken, the poor publicity will hound them.

CurrentC requires access to bank accounts. No one wants to give away this information to a little-known company, moreover, see #2..

CurrentC requires social security numbers. See #2.

CurrentC uses QR codes which are less secure than NFC/fingerprint/biometric identification.

CurrentC is more difficult to use than NFC-based solutions.

Too many people don’t have bank accounts and need credit cards to be able to purchase. This is a large market that CurrentC can’t currently tap

CurrentC may not be able to overcome the negative publicity associated with being the reason Apple Play has been blocked.

In order for CurrentC to have become a major player, they would have had to launch one-year or more earlier. The technology they use has been around for many years so obviously, this wasn't the issue. Moreover, to encourage use, they would have had to give consumers back something. For example, a 2.5% savings on all sales for one-year might have cemented their position as a solid credit card alternative.

In fact, helping retailers avoid the 2-3% credit card fee is exactly the reason this company is gaining traction. But while retailers would love to take the credit card companies out of the purchasing equation, plastic offers many benefits such as favorable dispute resolution which consumers love. Then there is the matter of cash back, miles and points which consumers are already used to accumulating when they shop using cards.

In other words, now that alternatives exist, and they are getting easier, it is too late to get consumers to accept a QR-based system that takes credit cards out of the equation. If CurrentC evolves and takes my cash-back idea, things may get more competitive. For now though, Apple Pay and to a lesser extent, Google Wallet will be the major players in the space and retailers will likely have to buckle to consumer pressure to support these systems

If you’re looking for more good information on the topic of Apple Pay and why it will be successful, check out this Seeking Alpha article. Gary Kim also has some solid thoughts on the matter as well.

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Apple Pay Vs. Google Wallet tag:blog.tmcnet.com,2014:/blog/rich-tehrani//13.524612014-10-21T18:00:15Z2014-10-21T18:04:59ZReplacing credit cards can likely only be done if the new system is dead-easy to use and it moreover has to be accessible by novice and expert alike. To that end, I tested Apple Pay and Google Wallet without prior...Rich Tehranihttp://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/rich-tehrani/Replacing credit cards can likely only be done if the new system is dead-easy to use and it moreover has to be accessible by novice and expert alike. To that end, I tested Apple Pay and Google Wallet without prior experience. I did not get Google Wallet to work. For all you Apple-haters out there - I had no agenda here. I used an Apple device and a Google device to ensure the playing field was level. Winner this round: Apple Pay.

Let the hate-mail commence.

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Will Amazon Drone Delivery Fail?tag:blog.tmcnet.com,2014:/blog/rich-tehrani//13.524412014-10-11T13:27:36Z2014-10-11T13:44:51ZWhile there have been reports of shooting at drones, you may not be familiar with the fact that birds can be quite territorial and attack flying objects in their territory. Some while back a hummingbird drone was attacked by a...Rich Tehranihttp://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/rich-tehrani/
While there have been reports of shooting at drones, you may not be familiar with the fact that birds can be quite territorial and attack flying objects in their territory. Some while back a hummingbird drone was attacked by a smaller hummingbird.

Now, a hawk attacked a more conventional drone because it was defending its area. How birds will respond to hundreds of drones delivering toothbrushes and underwear is anyone’s guess.

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HumansFirst ColdSmoke Lets You Buy with your Smartphonetag:blog.tmcnet.com,2014:/blog/rich-tehrani//13.522882014-08-07T21:49:32Z2014-08-07T22:05:50ZRich Tehranihttp://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/rich-tehrani/
While speech-technology has come a long way, we still haven’t entered the world of Star Trek reruns where the computer can do truly useful things through voice interactions. A big step in the right direction comes from a new app from N.L.P. LLP called HER. Yes, Siri works well for many things but if you tell it you want to buy an iPad Mini with Retina Display, it tells you to check out Apple.com which isn’t the best mobile experience if you want to buy something quickly.

The company’s website is humans-first.com but in the app stores the app HER is listed as being from N.L.P which stands for for natural language processing. The company bases its innovative app on its own ColdSmoke SaaS platform which maps natural language to web services APIs. They also provide a Software Developer Kit (SDK) to quickly bring new NLP-based apps to market.

In testing, results were generally good. When I first asked to purchase an iPad Mini with Retina display I immediately got to see iPad Minis from Amazon.com. Subsequently the same query sent me to Best Buy and showed me iPad Mini cases and accessories. Then again, this is what could happen when you search on the site of Best Buy or Amazon using a keyboardl. I just wonder how the service nailed it on my first try.

How to book a flight with HER

Searching for a hotel in Vegas worked flawlessly. Still, we aren’t talking “Star Trek” or “Jeopardy” smart as when I asked for the most expensive hotels in Las Vegas, it returned the same results as my initial search.

Quite often, one service excels at a specific task while another isn’t as good. For example, some mapping apps are more accurate than others due to their up-to-date database while others are better at showing traffic alerts.

HER (Google Play, iOS) is something you should consider putting on your list of apps to try when you want to make a hotel reservation or buy something on the go. As it evolves, I hope that one day it will be a service that truly reminds us of Star Trek.

To see the company in action and lean more about ColdSmoke, be at the Smart Voice Conference next week in Las Vegas, collocated with ITEXPO.

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Rebirth of Paper Boys to Reduce Unemploymenttag:blog.tmcnet.com,2014:/blog/rich-tehrani//13.520462014-05-05T14:43:56Z2014-05-05T15:42:13ZWhen I was a kid my best friend had a paper route and on occasion I would run it for him. For those of my readers not old enough to know, grade-school kids used to deliver papers in the neighborhoods...Rich Tehranihttp://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/rich-tehrani/
When I was a kid my best friend had a paper route and on occasion I would run it for him. For those of my readers not old enough to know, grade-school kids used to deliver papers in the neighborhoods of the US. Sure, this practice still takes place but on a much smaller scale than before. Now the term is likely “paper people” but putting aside political correctness, I couldn’t help by think of this idea in response to what is happening in Congress and private industry.

Many of us know the US Postal Service or USPS has a monopoly on mailboxes. Interestingly though as this entity is bleeding money and subsequently Congressman Darrell Issa, R-CA, proposed a bill that would “permit periodicals, newspapers and unstamped mail to be placed in mailboxes on days when the Postal Service does not provide mail delivery.”

Thomas J. Quinlan, CEO of magazine printing giant R.R. Donnelley, told financial analysts this week that he would be in favor of this proposal and is even prepared to take on local delivery of magazines if it were made possible.

There seems to be no good reason for US taxpayers and their children to have to continue to take on the financial costs of mail delivery if private companies will do it for free and in-fact pay more taxes as a result.

Yes, Amazon, eBay and Google are all playing in the local-delivery space and now printers are thinking of doing so as well. One wonders if this doesn’t open up new employment opportunities in depressed neighborhoods around the country and if we may see resurgence in paper “people” as a result of this newfound need to distribute goods for competitive advantage.

Of course the challenge with all these plans is scale. You could argue that if the USPS can’t make money delivering the packages that everyone sends (excluding FedEx, UPS and a few others), then how can a specialized delivery network make money doing so?

Many companies getting into the delivery biz have likely thought this through but the idea doesn’t seem to be putting them off for now. In fact, just today, Google expanded its same-day delivery service to Manhattan and Los Angeles.

The good news for consumers is better access to products and services at reasonable prices thanks to increased competition. Moreover, one imagines some sort of resource-sharing will have to take place between the printing and tech companies in order to make these new initiatives more cost-effective.

In the end though, we seem to have the perfect storm for increased youth employment; Tech’s desire to take on UPS coupled with the USPS not able to make money thanks to their high operating costs. The only hole in my theory is what happens when Google perfects delivery robots coupled with self-driving cars? It will likely happen in the next ten years but until then, it looks like “paper people” is the next great job opportunity for the unemployed.

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PayPal Unveils Innovative Payment Solutions at MWC 2014tag:blog.tmcnet.com,2014:/blog/rich-tehrani//13.518642014-02-25T20:55:52Z2014-02-25T18:06:35ZOne of the more exciting companies at Mobile World Congress 2014 in Barcelona has to be PayPal as they announced their payment solutions are built into Samsung Galaxy S5 allowing you to pay with your finger. Also the PayPal app...Rich Tehranihttp://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/rich-tehrani/
One of the more exciting companies at Mobile World Congress 2014 in Barcelona has to be PayPal as they announced their payment solutions are built into Samsung Galaxy S5 allowing you to pay with your finger. Also the PayPal app is built into the Galaxy Gear smartwatch and phones - allowing you to check in at retailers at standard check-out locations or using PayPal beacon. This is the first instance of PayPal in the wearable tech space BTW. The way it works is the first time you walk in to a retailer, you give the beacon permission to bill you and after that, they check you out as you walk by. Your face becomes the password as it shows up for the cashier to verify as you leave.

Retailers can also tune beacon to have less or more range depending on how many checkout lines they have etc. And cell phones don't need to be connected to the internet to process payments - the beacon connects the phone to the internet instead.

I had a chance to sit down with John Lunn Global Director of PayPal Developer Networks at PayPal and I asked if he thinks the company wil be a leader going forward in the mobile payment space. He answered that the company already is, saying, "We processed 15% of worlds mobile payments which is $27B. This is up from $14B and $6B the years before." The company is focusing on providing experiences to make people's lives better he said. We have always been anti-NFC he stated, we don't think it makes things better, just faster. He continued to say, "The worse thing about shopping is paying, so why do you wait in line to do it?" He said, [With our system,] when you enter, your face is your password and when you leave, you smile and wave to authenticate/pay. I asked about the biggest challenge the company faces to which he replied, education. Consumers need to know why they should do it and how to do it.

Brick and mortar stores know next to nothing about you compared to online where they know everything about you he stated. Now, customers will be able to have salespeople waiting with the pair of jeans they tried on the day before. This is a better experience for all involved he proposed.

I asked him about virtual currencies and he said, they aren't ready for mainstream. He continued by saying, "How do you price it?" He stated they are too hard to use as a currency with their current level of stability. They need regulation or a controlling force. Finally, he said he loves the idea but we can't use it at the moment,

I asked about competion from Google, Apple and others and he said, "We do payments well. We aren't a search company. We don't make hardware. We don't have a secret agenda." Finally he said, "This makes a big difference on how you develop products."

I asked if they toyed with virtual currencies at all - they haven't. He said, They are involved in mobile payments and every currency is electronic [in their system] anyways - so there isn't a huge amount of difference.

In other recent news, the company announced recently its new reationship with Deutsche Telecom in addition with 250 previous carrier relationships allowing mobile payment simplicity on their networks. Also, there is a new mobile SDK - a library for Android or iOS. It allows you to use the native app to pay. You don't need to go to a separate website each time to authenticate. You authenticate once and thats it.

As payments move to mobile, PayPal is certainly positioned well as an independent player to support many vendor ecosystems and carriers as a flexible solution which not only streamlines payments but makes the shopping process similar to online in terms of efficiency and customer experience management.

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IBM: Digital Darwinism May Kill Youtag:blog.tmcnet.com,2013:/blog/rich-tehrani//13.515162013-10-08T15:33:47Z2013-10-08T16:01:42ZIn a candid IBM interview, Carl Ford of Crossfire Media spoke with Blair Reeves who said companies should spend less time on advertising and worrying about various channels and instead focus more on putting customers at the center of their...Rich Tehranihttp://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/rich-tehrani/
In a candid IBM interview, Carl Ford of Crossfire Media spoke with Blair Reeves who said companies should spend less time on advertising and worrying about various channels and instead focus more on putting customers at the center of their business. He went on to explain that everything is part of big data – there is so much data going out there not only on the marketing side but related to how people are buying and selling he said. Another interesting point was this coupled with social information can be used by companies to serve their customers better.

Some types of data he mentioned are as follows:

What customers create: what they post to Facebook about their likes and dislikes

What/where/how customers buy and what they do with their purchases

How do they engage with brands and companies – through stores, kiosks, contact centers, mobile apps, etc

What he said was these are not discrete experiences, they are part of a larger omnichannel experience. Reeves went on to explain these challenges are cultural and organizational as much as they are technological. He concluded by saying sometimes it is even a political issue.

Perhaps the most compelling part of the interview was a reference to “digital Darwinism” where the companies that move and adapt quickly making smarter investments and moves with their customer base will win over those stuck in the past.

Citing an example he mentioned an airline he flew on to France allowed him to access flight information quite easily – he hates dealing with currency he explained which is why he paid for his luggage fees online. The company provided a rich experience and a lot of customer value. He was able to tweet with them when he needed to communicate and he received real responses which helped answer his questions. The airline had a single view of all his communications and information he said. He contrasted this to his ISP where none of the people he contacted on the phone and on social networks seemed to know what was going on. He had to constantly repeat the same information about his contact data and more. When the technician came to his house he realized that the person had not been told what the problem was and he had to repeat it all once again.

His point was the last-mile market had little competition which explains whey there hasn't been much focus on the customer. Google Fiber he surmised will finally disrupt the ISP space.

He went on to discuss the Watson Customer Engagement Advisor – this will allow customers to have their questions understood in context so questions, problems and complaints will be responded to in real-time. He says this will provide a lot of value for customers.

He tied this into IBM’s Smarter Commerce and Smarter Planet strategy – where the world will better cope with the increasing amount of information it has and use it in a meaningful way that provides value to people’s lives, building a world which is a lot easier to live in.

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Silk Road: Why Bitcoin Value has Dropped 20% Todaytag:blog.tmcnet.com,2013:/blog/rich-tehrani//13.515032013-10-02T18:08:07Z2013-10-02T18:57:40ZRich Tehranihttp://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/rich-tehrani/
If you haven’t heard, the value of Bitcoins has plummeted by 20% so far today because the Silk Road website has been shut down according to sources who also say the founder of the site has been recently arrested. Silk Road has become an underground site which allows illegal transactions which often involve Bitcoins. The value of the virtual currency has decreased potentially because investors fear future government regulation of Bitcoins and other online currencies.

Ross William Ulbricht, a 29-year-old graduate of the University of Pennsylvania School of Materials Science and Engineering known by the online alias “Dread Pirate Roberts,” was in fact arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation yesterday for his alleged involvement in the Silk Road online marketplace, according to court papers published this week.

The Silk Road website was shut down following Ulbricht's arrest.

The value of the virtual currency has been volatile today – here is a link to the latest prices.

A 3-hour chart of Bitcoin prices as of today

Federal prosecutors in New York charged Ulbricht with narcotics trafficking conspiracy, computer hacking conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy. A criminal complaint also alleges that in March 2013, Ulbricht engaged in a “murder-for-hire” scheme where he enlisted one Silk Road user to murder another Silk Road user who was threatening to release the identities of all of the website’s users.

The operation that led to Ulbricht’s arrest was a collaboration between the FBI, police, and prosecutors in the Southern District of New York; since November 2011, agents claim to have made over 100 different drug purchases through Silk Road. The complaint estimates that Silk Road has processed transactions worth over a total of 9.5 million Bitcoins, which adds up to roughly $1.2 billion in sales.

The controlled substances involved in the offense included among others, one kilogram and more of mixtures and substances containing a detectable amount of heroin, five kilograms and more of cocaine-containing mixtures, 10 grams of substances containing LSD and likewise for methamphetamine.

The interesting issue here is can the website owner be liable for illicit activity taking place on a site? Certainly this is the case with Megaupload but not the case with an array of sites where comments and photos uploaded can be deemed to be breaking the law.

The feds are making the case that the site was created to sell illegal drugs - in other words if a site is designed expressly to break the law there is potential liability. This is the case here according to court documents - by the way aren't the feds off because of the government shutdown? Certainly there is some interesting timing happening here.

Its also worth pointing out this case could certainly be a concern for Bitcoin investors as it mentions the virtual concurrency was used as a money-laundering vehicle.

Moreover, the complaint goes on to explain that Dread Pirate Roberts or (DPR) intentionally hid his server location by utilizing the TOR network and used Bitcoins to anonymize the financial interactions.

The agent who is quoted in the report says that the goal of Silk Road was to make illegal transactions as easy to conduct as a mainstream e-commerce site and that it received in commissions of over 600,000 Bitcoins or $80 million dollars

In further reading of the document, the case is made that the site is designed primarily to sell illegal drugs - but it does not seem to make the case. In other words if the site was also able to be used to sell Pez dispensers as well as drugs does that mean it is expressly being designed to support illegal activities?

To counteract such arguments the complaint explains that sellers are advised to vacuum-seal packages containing narcotics in order to avoid detection. It also points out that the site gives information on how to keep site activity anonymous - not that there is anything illegal about such suggestions (yet anyway).

There is also mention of a Silk Road using a tumbler when processing transactions in order to divide up the transaction into difficult-to-detect random dummy transactions obscuring the transaction details between the buyer and seller. Quite often throughout the complaint the agent uses the phrase "Based on my training and experience" when trying to frame conduct of the defendant in a negative light. In one case he uses this phrase to support his feeling that the only function served by such tumblers is to assist with the laundering of criminal proceeds. If there is a weakness in the complaint (which I didn't read in-full) it is this statement - buyers and sellers could want to keep their transactions personal for any number of reasons.

When Napster was shut down, a number of P2P sites allowed file sharing... One has to imagine that this shut down will only temporarily halt the trafficking of illegal goods online. As a result of this case, we can expect more sites to become popular - perhaps based outside the US that will be even more difficult for law enforcement agencies worldwide to get to. One would imagine the value of Bitcoins should be unaffected over the long-term.